The Girl on the Velvet Swing

by Simon Baatz

  Mary Thaw eventually acceded to her son’s wishes. There could be no insanity defense if Harry refused to allow the psychiatrists to examine him, and there appeared no possibility that his resolve would ever weaken. But Harry’s strategy would depend on a single witness—Evelyn Nesbit—whose testimony must persuade the jury that Stanford White had in fact drugged and raped her. No other person had witnessed the alleged rape, and no one could testify in support of Evelyn’s statements on the witness stand. There was no physical evidence to corroborate her story, and everything, therefore, would necessarily depend on the coherence of her account.48

  But how would it be possible for a young woman, twenty-one years old, with no courtroom experience and no knowledge of the law, to withstand the pressure that the district attorney would inevitably bring to bear? She would be alone on the witness stand, testifying to events that had occurred several years previously, trying to recall details that might now be only vaguely remembered, and all the time, at every moment, the prosecution would be seeking to expose contradictions in her account, to catch her in a lie, and to reveal her testimony as false. William Travers Jerome, the district attorney, a shrewd, calculating prosecutor, a man with extensive experience in the city’s criminal justice system, would mercilessly interrogate her on cross-examination. It would be an unequal contest—Evelyn Nesbit would falter in her testimony—and everyone predicted that Harry would go to the electric chair.

  5

  FIRST TRIAL

  January 23, 1907–April 12, 1907

  “THE DEFENDANT IS ACCUSED OF THE CRIME OF MURDER IN THE first degree.” The assistant district attorney, Francis Garvan, addressed the jury in a ponderous manner, each sentence followed by a slight pause. “It is claimed by the people of the State that on June 25, in this county, he shot and killed with deliberation and premeditation and intent to kill, one Stanford White.”

  There was nothing ostentatious about Garvan’s opening address, nothing superfluous about his words, as he described how Harry Thaw had murdered Stanford White during a performance of the musical comedy Mamzelle Champagne. Thaw had acted deliberately, firing three bullets, then holding his gun above his head as if to indicate that he intended no further harm, calmly speaking to his wife before leaving Madison Square Garden. “He was placed under arrest, and was brought to the police station. He has been indicted by the Grand Jury and is now here before you to be tried upon the charge.”1

  The hush of the courtroom was broken by a slight cough, and Garvan glanced toward the far side of the room. Harry Thaw, seated in the front row, his attorneys on either side, coughed a second time, muffling the sound with a handkerchief. The six defense lawyers sat stone-faced, paying no attention to Thaw, waiting impassively for Garvan to conclude his address. Daniel O’Reilly occupied the aisle seat, adjacent to the jury box; Henry McPike and A. Russell Peabody sat on his left; and three more lawyers—Delphin Delmas, John Gleason, and Clifford Hartridge—filled the remaining seats in the front.

  Garvan had spoken for fifteen minutes and already he was approaching the end of his address. No one disputed the facts, Garvan continued, and the state need only show that the defendant had acted intentionally in order to prove his guilt. “The people claim that it was a cruel, deliberate, malicious, premeditated taking of a human life. After proving that fact to you,” he said, addressing the jurors, “we will ask you to find the defendant guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.”2

  The district attorney, Travers Jerome, nodded his approval, whispering some congratulatory remarks to his assistant as Garvan returned to his seat. The judge, James Fitzgerald, spoke next, saying that those people who expected to testify should leave the courtroom, and the clerk of the court, William Penney, stepped forward to escort Evelyn Nesbit to a side door. Delphin Delmas, the lead attorney for the defense, had warned Mary Thaw that he might call her to testify on her son’s behalf, and she too gathered her belongings, walking alongside her daughter-in-law to wait in an anteroom outside the courtroom. Harry’s siblings—his brothers, Josiah and Edward, his sister Margaret, and her husband, George Lauder Carnegie—all remained, seated behind the attorneys.3

  Lawrence White, the son of the slain architect, was the first witness, telling the court that he had met his father for dinner on the evening of the murder. He had taken a cab uptown with a friend after dinner to see a musical at the New York Theatre, leaving his father to walk alone to Madison Square Garden for the opening of Mamzelle Champagne. He had returned to the family’s town house on Gramercy Park, retiring around eleven o’clock, but reporters had awoken him shortly before midnight to tell him that someone had shot his father.4

  A second witness, the coroner’s physician, Timothy Lehane, also testified, saying that he had performed the autopsy on the day after the murder. He had found three bullets in White’s body: two bullets had entered the skull, resulting in cerebral hemorrhage, the cause of death; a third bullet had hit White’s arm.5

  Other witnesses, members of the audience at Madison Square Garden, described the shooting, telling the court that Thaw had walked toward the stage to stand directly in front of Stanford White. He stood motionless for a few seconds before raising his gun and firing three shots. White collapsed, bleeding profusely, and Thaw, holding the gun above his head, retreated toward the rear of the theater, giving up his gun to the duty fireman.

  There was little distinction between one account and another; they all agreed in the essential particulars. Even Delphin Delmas seemed content to let the testimony go unchallenged. Occasionally Delmas would cross-examine a witness, asking about some detail—what was the expression on Thaw’s face? how was White sitting when Thaw shot him?—but his questioning seemed otherwise perfunctory; and very quickly, almost as soon as it had begun, the state had presented its case.6

  Evelyn Nesbit lifted her veil as the clerk of the court, William Penney, waited to administer the oath. She removed her gloves, holding them in her left hand, her right hand raised as she repeated the words that Penney spoke to her. The crowd looked on expectantly, watching as she made her way across the front of the courtroom to the witness stand, waiting as she ascended the steps to sit in a high-backed chair on a raised platform.

  She had placed her gloves on a small table by her side and she now sat erect, her back straight, her hands resting in her lap. She seemed so slim, so slight, almost impossibly young, closer in age to sixteen than twenty-two. There was nothing elaborate about her appearance: her dark-blue velvet jacket, white linen shirtwaist, and plain blue skirt provided no hint that she was married to one of the wealthiest men in the country. She wore a diamond solitaire ring and a gold wedding band on her left hand and a silver bracelet watch on her wrist. A black velvet ribbon fastened her hair away from her shoulders, at the nape of her neck, and a lawn tie, done in a bow, softened the severity of her white shirtwaist blouse.7

  Delphin Delmas rose slowly from his chair, stepping toward his witness.

  “You are Evelyn Nesbit Thaw?” he began.

  “Yes.”

  “You are the wife of the defendant, Harry K. Thaw?”

  “I am.”

  “On the evening of the twenty-fifth of June of last year were you in company with your husband at dinner at the Café Martin, in this city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kindly state who, if any one besides you two, composed the party?”

  “Mr. Truxton Beale and Mr. Thomas McCaleb.”

  They had dined together that evening at Café Martin, a restaurant at Twenty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue, leaving shortly after eight o’clock to walk across Madison Square for the opening night performance of Mamzelle Champagne, a musical comedy playing at Madison Square Garden. They had arrived in the middle of the first act, finding four seats at the rear of the theater. There had been nothing unusual, nothing untoward, about the evening; she had noticed nothing in her husband’s behavior that might have caused comment; and she remembered only that he had left his seat for about ten mi
nutes to talk to an acquaintance sitting by the balustrade on the south side of the rooftop theater. Harry returned to her side; but she was not enjoying the performance, and they decided to leave shortly afterward.

  “Will you kindly describe to the jury,” Delmas asked, “how the party left?”

  “We all went out together…. We were almost to the elevator and I was talking to Mr. McCaleb and turned around to say something to Mr. Thaw and he was not there.”

  She had looked around, searching the theater for her husband, when she suddenly noticed Stanford White seated at a table near the stage. Harry was motionless, standing directly before White.

  “What was he doing?” Delmas asked.

  “He had his arm out,” Evelyn replied, raising her right arm, holding it straight before her, pointing it in the direction of the attorney, “like that.”

  “Did he then move forward?”

  “No, he stood still a little longer.”

  “Did you hear any shots fired?”

  “I did…. Immediately I saw Mr. Thaw I heard the shots.…”

  “How many shots did you hear?”

  “Three.”8

  Her voice was quiet, almost soft, yet she spoke in a matter-of-fact manner, each word so clear and distinct that even those spectators at the back of the courtroom could hear her answers. Occasionally she leaned forward as though to add emphasis to her testimony; at other times she placed her elbow on the arm of the chair, resting her chin on her hand. Sometimes Delmas would walk a few paces back and forth in front of her, twirling his eyeglasses in his hand, and she would follow his movements, always responding to each question in the same quiet, unhurried tone of voice.

  Delphin Delmas, sixty-two years old, was a short, stubby man, about five feet six inches tall, slightly overweight, with a pompous manner. As a young man he had won a reputation as a clever, resourceful attorney, and he still treasured that reputation, now dulled with age, much as one might value an expensive overcoat that had become shabby through overuse. He had studied first at Santa Clara College in California, traveling east in 1863 to learn law at Yale University, eventually establishing a practice in San Francisco. His mannerisms in court seemed old-fashioned, reminiscent of the previous century; his sentences were too elaborate, excessively long-winded, and his gestures were overly dramatic, more for show than for effect. But he had learned his trade well, and he had not forgotten the tricks of a legal practice that had already lasted several decades. His knowledge of the law was compensation for his manner, and he almost invariably triumphed in the courtroom. He had a dour, disdainful expression and was often abrupt in his manner, but he was a clever lawyer who prepared each case meticulously, checking every detail that might win him an advantage.9

  Mary Thaw hired Delphin Delmas to represent Harry Thaw during his first trial for the murder of Stanford White. Delmas had studied at Santa Clara College in California before entering Yale University to study law. He served as a delegate to the 1904 Democratic National Convention in St. Louis and nominated William Randolph Hearst as the Democratic candidate for president. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ds-10595)

  There was little chance, he had told Evelyn before the trial, that a jury would send Harry to the electric chair after hearing an account of the rape that Stanford White had inflicted on her. They had rehearsed her testimony beforehand, talking together for hours over the details that he needed her to describe in court. She should hold nothing back, Delmas had said; every detail, no matter how graphic, would serve both to damn Stanford White and to save her husband. But it was important, above all else, that she present her testimony about the rape in the form of a conversation that she had had with her husband. She had first told Harry about the rape in 1903, in their apartment in Paris, and it was that conversation, Delmas believed, that had tipped Harry over the edge into insanity.

  The district attorney, Travers Jerome, would attempt to prove her account false, to trip her on some detail, to catch her in a contradiction, even perhaps to claim that the rape had never happened. But Jerome could cross-examine her only on the facts that had been entered into evidence on direct examination, which she had already presented to the court. He could not challenge the veracity of a private conversation that she had had with her husband, so their triumph over the district attorney would be assured, Delmas had said—but only as long as she avoided giving any direct testimony about the rape.

  “When,” Delmas asked, “had Mr. Thaw proposed for the first time to marry you?”

  “In June, 1903, in Paris,” Evelyn replied.

  “At the time Mr. Thaw proposed to you, at that time did you accept his offer or did you refuse it?”

  “I refused it.”

  “Did you state to him the reasons why you refused it?”

  “I did.”

  “In stating the reasons to Mr. Thaw why you refused his offer, did you state a reason to him which you then stated was based upon an event in your life with which Stanford White was connected?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you kindly give us the whole of that conversation from beginning to end?”

  Harry had proposed to her one evening during their stay in Paris, telling her that he loved her and that he wished to marry her. She had hesitated, and he had questioned her, wanting to know the cause of her reluctance, eventually surmising that it had something to do with Stanford White.

  She told Harry that Edna Goodrich, a dancer in Florodora, had first introduced her to the architect, taking her to meet White at a town house on Twenty-fourth Street. They had had lunch with White and one of his friends, and later that afternoon they had played together on the velvet swing. White subsequently invited her mother to visit him at his offices and immediately, it seemed, he won their confidence. He had been generous, almost excessively so, providing the money for their suite of rooms at the Audubon Hotel and paying for her brother to study at the military academy outside Philadelphia. White always seemed willing to pay any expense, and when her mother, Florence, mentioned that she might travel to Pittsburgh to visit some friends, White offered to pay for the journey.

  She, Evelyn, had seen White frequently during her mother’s absence. One day he suggested that she pose for a photographer, Rudolf Eickemeyer, at a studio on Twenty-second Street.

  “Did you describe or relate to Mr. Thaw what took place in that photograph studio?”

  “I said they showed me a dressing room and I put on a very gorgeous kimono…. I put on this Japanese kimono and Mr. White said it came from Hong Kong and I posed for a long time.”

  “Did you describe to Mr. Thaw the general appearance of those garments?”

  “I did…. Then the next night after that I received a note from Mr. White at the theatre asking me to come to a party and he would send a carriage for me; the carriage would be waiting.”

  She had taken the cab downtown, to Twenty-fourth Street, expecting to see other guests, but Stanford White had been at the town house alone. They had dinner together, and White took her upstairs to the fourth floor, where he offered her a glass of champagne.

  “He insisted that I drink this glass of champagne, which I did and I don’t know whether it was a minute after or two minutes after, but a pounding began in my ears…. The whole room seemed to go around: everything got very black.”

  Evelyn had previously given her testimony without hesitation—there had not been the slightest trace of emotion in her words—but suddenly, without warning, she stopped speaking. She turned away slightly, toward the window, shifting in her chair as if to hide her face from view. There was a sudden hush in the courtroom, a painful silence that seemed to last forever, ticking away minute by minute, as the spectators watched her struggle to control her emotions. There was a slight twitching in her left cheek, and tears started to well up in her eyes. Her hands were clasped tightly together on her lap, the fingers of one hand gripping the fingers of the other hand. Suddenly a loud cry broke the silence and Evelyn buried her face in her hands, her m
uffled sobs echoing through the courtroom.

  “Mrs. Thaw, I do not desire,” Delmas spoke quietly, his voice full of sympathy, “to distress you any more than is necessary in this matter, but it is absolutely essential that you should go on with your testimony.”

  Eventually she recovered her composure, taking up again the thread of her story; but her voice was no longer calm as she recounted the dreadful details of that night. She had awoken to find herself lying naked on the bed next to Stanford White. Telltale bloodstains on the sheets told her that he had raped her while she lay unconscious.

  “When I woke up all my clothes were pulled off me and I was in bed…. I screamed and screamed and screamed, and he came over and asked me to please keep quiet, that I must not make so much noise.”

  “Did you tell Mr. Thaw what took place between yourself and White?”

  “Yes.…”

  “You told all of this,” Delmas asked again, “to Harry Thaw that night in Paris after he had asked you to marry him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the effect of this statement of yours upon Mr. Thaw?”

  “It was very terrible…. He was very excited…. He bit his nails, he tore his hair. His face got very white…. He would get up and walk up and down the room…. He sat there and he cried…. Every now and then he would come and ask me particular things about it.”

  “Asked about the details of this occurrence?”

  “Yes, sir.”10

  She had not anticipated that her story would cause Harry such anguish, and she had not realized the extent of his hatred for Stanford White. Later that year, at the end of October, she had returned alone to New York while Harry remained in Paris.